What type of rate do you prefer?

Adjustable rate

Fixed rate

A mix of the two

Why are most people having adjustable mortgage rates on their home loans?
Is it better to have adjustable or fixed rate?

There are mainly two reasons why people choose adjustable mortgage rate:

1. Because, an adjustable rate is mainly lower, since you have to pay an insurance premium for knowing your rate beforehand and will not end up with negative (or positive) surprises. You have secured your price of living at a certain rate. Secondly;

2. since rates have steadily gone down for the last fifteen year or so, the bet to secure at a higher rate have been a losing bet. And since most home buyers memory have only seen interests going down and house prices going up, this is what they will define as a normal state of things.

The typical home buyer do now have the knowledge or understanding that interest rates have been much higher historically and most were not thinking of rates when rates were 15%, just back in the 90's.

Another misconception is that they will be able to change to a fixed rate later on if rates go up. No such luck. If rates are going up, they will not be able to fix their rate at todays low level. They must then fix it at a higher level or continue speculating that rates will remain low, thus ruining the whole idea about keeping the cost of living low and decrease risk. What all this basically means is that when choosing an adjustable rate you are speculating with your home as security that rates will go down or remain neutral.

When choosing a time-period, do not choose 2 or 3 years, since then you are only insured from spiking interest rates for that period. Choose a period for as long as you need to make payments for the house, thus knowing your cost of living for that period instead of running the risk of ugly surprises. The government will not bail you out. They only do that to the really big and stupid risk-takers that have million-dollar-bonuses every year.

When choosing a fixed mortgage rate today, you get the lowest fixed rates in the history of mankind, and pay the smallest premium ever compared to the adjustable rate. So instead of taking the risk to double the cost of your living, fixing your rate seems like a pretty good deal of you ask me.

Below a chart comparing the long 30-year-old rate (blue) and the short prime rate (orange).

One of the most common reasons people choose adjustable rates is that the average family moves every 7 years. A huge percentage of people these days plan on moving long before the 30-year mortgage would mature.

The thought process is that they will get a 5/1 ARM with a rate that is about 1% lower than the 30Y fixed. They might move in 3-5 years, having saved about $175 a month over a fixed mortgage. But worst case scenario, they move in about 7 years. Most 5 year ARMs have caps on the rate of increase. So even that extra couple years isn't going to hurt them much. They still end up saving about $12K or so over a comparable fixed mortgage over that 7 years.